


liminality

by romancandles



Category: The Get Down (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-21
Updated: 2016-09-21
Packaged: 2018-08-16 12:18:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,247
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8102158
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/romancandles/pseuds/romancandles
Summary: “I need to get out sometimes. To breathe,” says Dizzee. “You can breathe in here,” says Ra-Ra.





	

_This is a present from a small distant world, a token of our sounds, our science, our images, our music, our thoughts, and our feelings. We are attempting to survive our time so we may live into yours. [...] This record represents our hope and our determination and our goodwill in a vast and awesome universe._

_\-- Dedication of the Voyager Spacecraft, 1977_

 

Shao’s temple is a hallowed space and he wants to make an offering in exchange for Shao’s gift. There’s a bright, fiery spark of optimism inside him, lit up the night of his burner, like there’s space for Dizzee to shift into whatever it is he’s becoming. The spark turns into smoke from an actual fire when the place goes up in flames, Dizzee’s offering turning to ash and floating out across the East River into space, like volcanic ash transported thousands of miles away, taking root, alien things sprouting up half a world away.

A few days later, Thor saves him and Dizzee understands he’s conjured him, incarnated him into this world out of space and dreams and into Dizzee’s life: a real live human that Dizzee created himself. Harold and his fucking magic crayon.

**

After the DJ battle, the boys are keyed up and go out for food, but Dizzee crashes, sudden and hard. He’s bone tired, stretched out thin and brittle between the battle and worrying about Zeke and whatever he was tripping on last night that Thor’s friend gave him. It’s still daylight out but he goes home to sleep and wakes up the next morning with no memory of his dreams.

Boo-Boo is listless at breakfast, obviously hungover. Ra-Ra at least has the decency to look ashamed, but Dizzee’s the one their dad pulls aside after Boo excuses himself to be sick in the bathroom. “You’re supposed to look out for them,” he says, sounding like he doesn’t really believe it himself, and Dizzee goes tense all over. He wasn’t even there and even if he had been, once Boo-Boo gets something in his head it’s usually best to just let him do it and damage control after.

Yolanda corners him in the bathroom when he’s brushing his teeth, blearily squinting at his reflectio. “Don’t touch my stuff,” she says even as she reaches out to fluff up his hair where it’s flat on one side.

“Fuck off,” he tells her though a mouth full of toothpaste.

“You better watch that mouth, Diz,” his dad says on the other side of the door. They both jump and Dizzee chokes on his toothpaste. “And stay out of your sister’s room.”

Yolanda smirks. “Thanks, Daddy,” she says. Dizzee coughs and spits into the sink, wiping his eyes. When he looks at her in the mirror, she’s watching him, chewing on the corner of her mouth. “You looked good though,” she says, ducking back behind the door.

“Thanks,” he says to the empty bathroom.

**  
He’s out of the loop, but it’s easy to stop by the writers’ bench and fall back in with the crowd. There’s a good energy in the mornings, the commerce of ideas and art and gossip. It’s like Dizzee’s own little version of the salon where his mom keeps abreast of all the neighborhood goings on: who’s moving in or out or getting married or divorced or sneaking around on the side. No secrets from the Kipling empire.

“You’ve been busy,” says Crash when he shows up. He’s sitting upside down in one of the benches, painting patterns in the air with a magic marker, calf thrown over Daze’s shoulder on the other side.

“I guess,” says Dizzee, looking down at his book.

“You two really been lighting shit up.” There’s something careful about the way he says it. “Missed the party though. We were being concerned citizens.”

Dizzee scratches the back of his neck. He’s already sweating through his shirt. “It’s a good time.”

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Daze nod, pushing up his glasses with one hand. “That burner is crazy,” he says. Dizzee grins even though a part of him wants to be cool about it. The pieces are incredible and better than that, working on them is like magic. He’s always loved it, but this is the first time he’s felt like the act of creation is better than whatever the finished piece is. The phoenix piece was like having someone pull the ideas from his own mind as fast as he could begin to think them, like they were locked in already fully formed and someone just had to have the right key. “Fucking freedom of choice. Damn.”

Dizzee tenses, his neck and cheeks heating. It’s sometimes weird to have a piece dissected, like maybe someone’s going to see a clue Dizzee didn’t realize he was throwing out there. His mouth goes a little dry because, yeah, maybe especially this time. He wonders what Thor saw in him that first day when they traded books, if there was something obvious or hungry about him, if other people can see it too or if it’s specific, showing up only when Thor’s around.

“Daze took a picture to keep under his pillow, okay, for real.”

“I’m gonna keep it in the bathroom and jerk off to your artistry, Rumi,” says Daze, totally mild. Daze is unflappable, which is why he and Crash, who’s always dialed way, way up, get along so well. The three of them are a good team.

“I’m honored you’re giving up Crash’s mom.” Dizzee keeps his voice dry. Crash flips him off.

“Hey,” says Daze. “I have stamina for both.”

On his way to the library, he sees THOR is thrown up just outside the station that can’t be more than a few hours old. He must’ve done it in broad daylight. Dizzee looks around and carefully writes over it. Then he takes off a dead run and doesn’t stop until he clears the fence at the library. He kneels on all fours in the overgrown grass to catch his breath, panting to the hum of singing cicadas.

**

Watching Shao and Zeke create together gives him an itch under his skin. Most of the time they’re incomprehensible but then every so often Dizzee gets a glimpse of something electric. There are heavy clouds in the sky and ominous sounds of thunder, which means he’s likely safe to work. Cops aren’t gonna bother to run him down in the rain.

He catches Thor in the train yard, tagging the shit out of a whole train. He sees the tags first and finds him on the far side, halfway down the line, like Dizzee brought him here with the power of his mind. He must have a death wish, because he doesn’t notice until Dizzee’s almost on top of him. He does a double-take when he runs across Rumi, before he relaxes, giving Dizzee a little wave. It’s fun to make a game of throwing up sloppy tags for a while, running up and down the whole ten cars, making very little effort to stay out of sight and being way too fucking loud. Thor makes him want to be bolder and brighter, creep a little further out of his cocoon.

“I think it’s you,” says Dizzee, out of breath, surveying the train. “Only because you had more time.” Then, “fuck,” when a fat drop of water hits him directly in the eye. It starts to rain, just a few sprinkles at first that becomes a wall of water in less than fifteen seconds. He’s soaked to the skin before they make it under the fence. The familiar rumble-scream of the train is audible a block away; they hop the turnstiles but by the time they make it up the stairs, the platform is completely deserted. Dizzee rubs his eyes.

They camp out in a covered area where the benches have mostly all been ripped out, leaving rusted stalagmites of curved iron jutting up from the ground. Dizzee takes off his shirt to wring it out and when he looks up Thor is looking at him. Not staring, but Dizzee’s whole body heats up. “You gonna be okay getting back late?” Thor asks. He bends to unlace his boots, hair plastered in long wet strings to his forehead and cheek.

Dizzee shrugs, pulling his wet shirt back over his head. He and his dad have come to a grudging agreement: no drugs, no girls, and he’s always at breakfast and his dad will more or less continue to look the other way on his nighttime excursions. So far, he’s at least maintained the spirit of the rules. He tips his head back, tired all at once. It’s the rain or being suspended above the street, like time moves differently in the station. He read somewhere that people high up in the mountains age faster than people at sea level.

Thor slides down next to him on the ground, legs tented in front of him, feet bare. That detail -- his pale pruned feet gripping the dirty pavement -- makes his stomach drop. It seems real and immediate. Solid. Like something Dizzee wouldn’t have dreamt.

Dizzee stares out over the rails, out to the dark buildings around them. Fire sirens scream by in the distance, probably too late do any good. The South Bronx is speaking in a secret language of smoke signals: beware, welcome, save me. He thinks of Shao’s temple, his burning lungs and the acrid fear in his throat. “You ever feel like instead of you creating art it’s creating you?”

Thor mulls that one over for a while, picking at the split threads at his knees. His fingers are ragged around the nails, cuticles bitten down to the quick. “Like a mirror,” he says. “But you’re the reflection.”

“Yeah,” says Dizzee, relieved. It’s so easy to be understood for some reason, like he’s been walking around his whole life speaking a dialect related but distinct from everyone else and suddenly he’s stumbled across someone from the same faraway country.

There’s a something just under his skin, cutting, threatening to claw out or calcify itself inside him, like a grain of sand in a oyster. Start a fire and send ashes up into the night sky, the history of the world or the entirety of the human heart inscribed and sent off into far reaches of the galaxy on the infinitesimal chance that someone, somewhere will come across it and understand with their very atoms: we was here.

**

His mom bakes a special cake to celebrate the record -- a buttery yellow with chocolate frosting -- and for dinner braised eggplants with tomatoes and chicken thighs. Set Me Free is like its own alive thing, breathing and kicking, making room for itself in the world with an explosion.

“At least someone in this family’s kicking in,” their dad says. “No free passes for the rest of you now.” The rest of them roll their eyes, yeah okay Pops, sure, but Dizzee feels his dad’s gaze on him. The summer is fleeting and precious, made all the more urgent because this will be the first year his life won’t be tied to the regular rhythms of the classroom. In September Ra-Ra, Boo-Boo, and Yolanda will all go back to school and he’ll -- do something.

“If they’re famous, I ain’t workin’,” says Boo-Boo, scoffing.

“What’re you gonna do instead?”

Boo-Boo shrugs and makes an ambiguous gesture that could from some angles be considered obscene. “Oh, you know.” He sprawls back in his chair.

Their dad nods. “A philosopher king,” he says. Yolanda and the girls crack up. The girls laughing is always infectious, but Dizzee believes it. Boo’s the baby, but he’s got the fire and confidence of the rest of them put together. One day Dizzee’s going to come back home and find Boo-Boo sitting on the throne of the Bronx.

Dizzee clears the plates and washes up after dinner. Most things are his chores these days; his siblings have been living free and large ever since his arrest in the spring. He spent almost the whole night in jail sitting on the floor with his head in his arms, trying to disappear as much as possible. One of the cops was a regular at the shop and his dad was there in the morning, face like granite. It was still freezing outside, remnants of black-streaked snow on the ground, and the way his dad gripped him on the sidewalk was more like a bone-crushing straitjacket than a hug. They rode the train in absolute silence. His dad wouldn’t look at him, just watched something beyond the windows, kind of defeated. Their mom cried, not in front of Dizzee, but later at night he could hear her through the wall. Since then, it’s like his dad has redoubled his efforts. He finds City College pamphlets and flyers stuffed into his books, wrapped around paint cans with a rubber band.

“Can’t stay like this forever, Diz,” his dad says. He’s drying plates methodically. Dizzee tenses, hands wet and soapy, and takes a slow breath. No one can get under his skin like his dad can with a single look. There’s an electricity to the air.

“Yeah, Dad,” he says. “I’ll figure it out.”

Later, they go to a party in a cordoned off underpass beneath a derelict El station, where someone’s strung up Christmas lights split from a fuse blocks away, the orange extension cords disappearing off into the night. Flash deigns to let Shao spin a few records, so Dizzee climbs up the covered steps and swings himself through a busted-out window at the landing so he can crawl onto the roof. Zeke’s up there near the turn tables, in Shao’s ear, looking like he can’t believe his reality. People look up when Shao takes over, cheer, and of course Zeke’s already got it, that invisible force around that him that draws people in, makes them hush and listen when he speaks, like some ancient truth teller.

Ra-Ra gestures for him to come down with wide, sweeping motions but Dizzee feels safer up here, tucked away, watching. It’s transformative, what Shao and Zeke do together, weaving their spell. When you’re inside, the rest of it, everything, starts to fall away. Only from the outside can Dizzee see the magic at work.

The warm yellow lights of apartments and the red and whites of businesses terminate abruptly where the rubble fields start, a flat absence that looks like a park or the river until he remembers which direction he’s facing. A spot of infection spreading slowly outwards, gangrene creeping up the leg. It’s so empty and dark out there he could probably see the stars.

**

“Come down to the city tonight,” says Thor, abruptly. They’re walking through the tunnel, doing a general survey of the real estate.

“Another art party?” Dizzee asks. Art party. Dizzee had no idea. Then he bites his lip, thinking about the record and wiping his damp palms on his jeans on the two, and, huh, maybe he did know.

Thor looks down, a startling red flush in full bloom across his face. “Not the same, but kind of that vibe, yeah,” he says behind his hair. Thor’s blown out pupils and how quiet he was, touching Dizzee like he couldn’t get enough of him, the way he searched Dizzee’s face when Dizzee gave him the record. The phoenix. It’s easy to be brave when Thor’s not looking at him.

“Sure,” he says. Thor looks ghoulish for a second, just a set of dark spots in his face where his eyes should be, then he moves a little and resolves into himself.

On the train, after he’s snuck out, Dizzee can’t hold himself still. He’s gotten used to spending his time in these interstitial spaces -- trains, tunnels, the library-cum-temple, the rubble fields transformed for a one night only into a raucous party -- and he’s grown comfortable with their entropy and decay. The tunnels fly, passing trains filled with people all headed off on their own journeys. It’s incredible to believe sometimes that every other vacant-looking person tapping a foot to a silent beat on the train feels what he feels, has a rich inner life teeming with the same infinite possibility and depth. He half expects he’s going to step off the train into a different world: up is down, light is dark, green sky, blue ground, full of aliens.

It’s overwhelming again, the lights and the bodies and all the beautiful people in a giant miasma of pure energy, a fever dream. He ends up alone for a while, but he doesn’t feel alone; they’re connected, the two of them, but also everyone around him, linked by golden threads like a spider web.

There’s some kind of cosmic synthesis going on, a kinetic synergy that he can almost see, Dizzee’s soaking it up like he’s starved, like he’s been starving all his life. He turns around at some point and Thor is there, laughing and leaning into him, lit blue and red and purple. It’s exactly the right thing to fit their mouths together to ask if he feels it too, but of course he does, because that’s how he was made: a puzzle piece that fits against Dizzee exactly.

**

Zeke’s work downtown eats up his time during the day and he’s exhausted at night, which means during the week Dizzee can spend the whole day tooling around the library with the boys and still have hours free to do whatever he wants.

They take flashlights and sturdy sticks through the stacks, stomping their feet and beating the walls to scatter roaches and rats, feeling like explorers coming across remnants of a once-advanced civilization, now deserted. The atrium is a wide open glass-covered space with a staircase sprawling up two directions like arms raised in exultation. Colored glass scatters across the floor where some of the skylights have broken. Some of the sections are water damaged or infested with silverfish and pigeons, but there are whole stacks untouched on the shelves in perfect order, like one day the librarians were told mid-afternoon to leave and never return. They find whole boxes of old comics from the fifties and early sixties wrapped in plastic sheeting, that Ra-Ra makes them ferry down to their salon. He hunts down the mythology section and switches the cover of a collection of Norse folk tales with the Aeneid, feeling simultaneously stupid and giddy.

“You headed out?” asks Ra-Ra, his beanpole body stretched out across one of the high-backed settees they scavenged from the old-style period reading rooms upstairs. “Tuna tonight.” Ra-Ra’s primary motivation in life, other than science-fiction, is food: he always knows what the menu looks like days in advance and spends each meal thinking about the next one. Their mom is always concerned Ra’s eating too much and Dizzee not enough.

“I’m gonna get some work done. Save me some.” He nods to Boo, who waves him off, but Shao gives him an irritated look.

“Man, this is work -- whatever.” Shao trails off, looking down at the turntables. Dizzee pauses in the dark hallway for a second, just out of reach of the lights. The three of them are in their own isolated worlds: Ra-Ra paging through The Avengers, Shao swaying to his headphones, and Boo-Boo singing softly while he builds a precarious tower of bottle caps. It feels like an old painting, all dramatic lights and high colors, weirdly ephemeral and beyond him.

They go to parties in the city where Thor seems to know everyone and climb the wide staircases of empty warehouses to tag, sometimes stopping on the roof to look down like kings. It’s louder in the city, even from way up, fewer bombed out husks of buildings and sirens screaming at all hours. He feels lit up and powerful, instead of the alien outcast he’s the overlord, looking down benevolently on his people below from the safety of his ship.

Outside, afterward, in the real world, they come back down to earth, settling back into themselves in overly lit late-night places, pooling their paltry money for greasy noodles and rice. It’s easy to click back, like switching view points on an optical illusion: look one way and they’re bright-eyed and high, heads bent together, scratching silly characters and made up tags into their paper placemats. Dizzee closes one eye to read the crossword clues from yesterday’s paper with smudges of grease and round rings from coffee mugs stamped across it.

“‘Isolated author preferring truth to love, money, or fame,’” he reads. There’s an old hardcover copy of Walden tucked away in the family bookshelf, gold lettering on the spine long since faded to a dull brown, marked up by the succession of Kipling children. He remembers imagining living in St. Mary’s or Central Park. “Thoreau. Thor-- A - E - U - X?”

“E - R - O - A - U? Fuck, I don’t know.” Thor buries his face in his arms. “It’s a lot of vowels.”

Dizzee taps the pen against Thor’s head and Thor catches his hand at the wrist, folding their fingers together for just a second. His hand is warm and his gaze is still a little glassy. Look the other way and they’re looking at each other like the rest of the world has been carved away, touching at the knee, calves pressed together where Thor’s slouching against him, the warmth radiating up into the base of Dizzee’s spine.

**

Yolanda and Boo-Boo get into a shoving match about the bathroom that ends in the toilet lid smashing into a million pieces and water seeping into the hallway. Boo-Boo is either stupid or brave going up against Yolanda, who is all elbows when she wants to be. They’re both sentenced to the apartment for the day, scrubbing the tiles in the shower with toothbrushes, which means Ra-Ra and Dizzee accompany their dad to the salvage yard on the hunt for replacements and two new chairs for the salon.

“What’d we do to deserve this?” asks Ra.

“My abode is a community,” says their dad philosophically, herding Ra-Ra and Dizzee gently by the back of their necks like when they were kids. “Every man must do his part to reap the harvest.”

Truthfully, Dizzee likes the salvage yard. It spans nearly a whole block of an old warehouse with rusted spots in the tin roof, pigeons nesting up near the rafters. Junk in all its forms: appliances, furniture, painted up doors and windows. The guys who run it are old family friends who used to let them have free bottles of Coke and and 7-Up and when they were kids, Diz and Ra-Ra would run loose amidst the stacks of old toilets, ovens, and other pieces of furniture while their dad whiled away the hours smoking and reliving his youth. Probably the reason they’re here is to prevent that from happening again.

The desks and tables especially are carved up with secret messages of initials, hearts, dates, declarations of love and hate. Capsules from another time and place reaching excavators who know where to look. He finds a door with tiny etches on it in graphite: Carolyn, Lawrence, and Jacqueline; Sept ‘73, ‘74, ‘75. At home, it’s on the doorframe inside the bathroom, starting when Dizzee was eight or nine, new to the neighborhood. Weekend before school like clockwork: new notebooks, new haircut, lining up in the hallway and his dad gently tilting his chin up to measure, their very own tree rings.

“See anything you can’t live without?” his dad comes up behind him. He raps at a door covered with tags, probably scraped wholesale from a building before the place went up in flames, with his knuckles. “Your predecessors. Look where they ended up.”

“It’s not about that,” he says, hating how sullen he sounds. They used to talk about things: the earth and sky and seasons, all the things that were really nothing, just tiny bursts of energy in empty space that somehow knitted together into two people and their family and their warm home right above the the Hub. His dad looks at all this junk and sees the treasure, a hint of what could be, David in the slab of marble, but lately he looks at Dizzee and that all evaporates. He tainted it, broke something irrevocably between them and now they’re trapped on either side of a very wide chasm, both straining to be heard.

**

“You can come up,” says Thor, “if you want.” Someone knocked out all the streetlamps on this block, so Dizzee can’t see his face, just long shadows where his features should be.

“Yeah,” he says after a beat. His hands are sweating. “Sure.”

Thor turns his head a little. “It’s a sixth floor walk up.”

Dizzee laughs. “Hell no. In that case I’m out.” It breaks some of the tension, at least, and Dizzee reaches out, touches the back of his hand to Thor’s so that whatever thorned thing growing in his chest calms down.

The living area is densely crowded with furniture in various stages of refurbishment, like some kind of wild antiques shop. Dizzee tries to catch his breath without appearing that he needs to and knocks his hip sharply against one of those old-style writing desks with the roll-down hoods. Coffee mugs and half-empty water glasses litter every surface.

Three walls of Thor’s bedroom are covered in drawings; the last one is bare with a dingy window looking directly at a brick wall. A milkcrate in the closet holds Krylons and few gallon-cans of paint; stacks of books and records are piled up on the floor, magic markers crammed into a bunch of jars and shoe boxes on the window sill. “I just paint over it when I fill it up.” One day some archeologist digging through the rubble of Manhattan will pull back each painstakingly, only to find another work, new and strange and wonderful underneath. This is how primitive peoples told their stories.

He’s stalling, examining the walls carefully to avoid looking at the bed, which is just a mattress on the floor under some mussed navy sheets. It’s weirdly intimate, like stepping into someone’s brain and seeing them reflected on all surfaces. Even though they’ve worked together, on huge multicolored pieces or tags like a game they’re trying to win, it’s different to be surrounded, like watching something nascent and fragile grow before his very eyes. There’s an early prototype of the piece in Dizzee’s book down in the corner where Thor would’ve had to sit cross-legged to reach it, dashes of color laid side by side to get them to come out just right. For some reason it’s that -- proof that he agonized over the book as much as Dizzee did -- that makes him turn around. Thor’s watching him from the doorway.

Thor asks if he wants anything, water, his voice sounding dry and dusty. “Water would be good.” Thor says _lemme just_ \-- trailing off when he turns away. Dizzee stands still in the middle of the room, breathing in magic marker and cigarettes. It takes under thirty seconds to throw up Rumi on the blank wall, dumb thick black lines while he listens to the faucet turn on and off again. There’s a half a beat when Dizzee second guesses himself, but when Thor comes back he kind of lights up around the eyes. “Hey,” he says.

Dizzee swallows. “Hey.” He laughs a little, which comes out breathy and unsteady. He drops the marker back into the shoebox. It’s a deep purple, he realizes, not black.

“Hey,” says Thor, just before he kisses him, still holding the water glass. Dizzee closes his eyes. It’s different here in Thor’s bedroom with dirty clothes on the floor and a paperback book lying face down on the ground next to the pillow, spine cracked all the way through. All he can hear is their breathing and the wet sounds of their mouths. When they’ve kissed before, he’s felt larger than life, a superhero, with his heart crashing in time to the bass and the throng of bodies all losing themselves. Now in the glow filtering in from outside, he feels small and all too human, easily crushed.

“I’m--” Thor says. “Give me a--” he bends down to set the glass on the floor. Dizzee’s shirt is wet along the hem where water spilled down his back and then he’s looking down at Thor sitting on the mattress. Reaching for his hand and bracketing his knees on either side of Thor’s hips.

When Dizzee skates his fingers up Thor’s chest, Thor's trembling. “It’s okay,” he says and he feels Thor’s laugh against his mouth.

“Yeah,” he says. Thor slides his hands up Dizzee’s back under his shirt and Dizzee ducks his face into Thor’s neck, puts his mouth against the tendon there. He’s not sure if the buzz is starting to wear off or what, but everything feels crystallized and focused in a way it hadn’t before, like before what they were doing was part of some performance and now it's just them, Thor's body warm and solid and real against his. Dizzee’s heart is trying to crawl out of his ribcage.

“Just,” he says, urging Thor to lie back to pull off his own shirt, already rucked up in the back around his shoulder blades. Thor’s looking at him, smiling a little the way he did the first time in the club, like he can’t believe his luck, which makes Dizzee’s shuddering breath a little softer. When Dizzee leans down to kiss him again, Thor trails his hands up Dizzee’s sides like he wants to map out his body, intent on remembering him. He could hold them here forever, probably, touching Thor’s chest and arms and waist, smoothing across the soft skin on his stomach, panting against Thor’s cheek. The air feels thick and heavy; he wishes they’d opened the window.

“Jesus,” says Thor.

Dizzee lifts his head. “What.”

Thor shakes his head. “You’re just--” He laughs again, looking about has blown up and overwhelmed as Dizzee feels, like he can’t even begin to find the words to describe what Dizzee is right now. He reaches to pull Dizzee back down and that flips the switch somehow. Whatever languid space they’d been in is broken and Dizzee suddenly can’t wait to get the rest of the clothes off, can’t decide if he wants to deal with his own clothes or Thor’s.

There’s a lot of quiet laughter until Thor pulls him close again with a sweaty arm, touching him with their foreheads pressed together and Thor’s breathing against his mouth. Dizzee wants to be kissed again, kissed like he’s this amazing precious thing and Thor does, licks into his mouth and mouths across his cheek and jaw, even though Dizzee’s the one shaking now, hot all over and rigid, giving long stuttering breaths when he moves his hips and tries to swallow. There’s a second where he thinks he’s never going to be able to come, not drawn up tight with one hand curled in Thor’s hair, his mouth on his shoulder where it tastes like salt and heat in the still airless marked up cathedral of Thor’s mind with the damp sheets that smell like smoke and human skin, until of course he does, the heat at the base of his spine turning liquid and his eyes closed, electric stars behind his eyelids.

Dizzee makes a small noise then says, “Hold on--” and kisses Thor when he touches him. It’s already slick and hot and Thor makes a few soft moans into his mouth, moving against Dizzee’s hand. He turns his face away when Diz adjusts his grip, and comes against Dizzee’s stomach with a breath like he’s laughing again. They lie there for a minute, too warm and curled together, and Dizzee closes his eyes against the ceiling, waiting for his heart to slow.

**

When he opens his eyes, watery gray light filters through the window, which means he’s very fucked. So very fucked that he wastes valuable time pressing his nose against Thor’s neck and breathing him in for a few minutes before getting dressed. There’s a white guy in a satin robe reading a cereal box in the kitchen. He nods at Dizzee, looking very hungover.

It’s fully light by the time he gets off the train. The clock at the station is perpetually stuck at two forty five but he guesses it’s after eight. He definitely missed breakfast. It’s tempting to head straight for the writer’s bench to blow off a little steam, but that’s only prolonging the inevitable. The difference is a few hours.

He runs into Zeke, headed to the salon, about a block from home. Zeke raises his eyebrows. “You’re up early.” Dizzee shrugs and Zeke rolls his eyes. “Okay, then,” he says, but he falls into step beside Dizzee. In some ways it’s weird that they were never closer, because they’re both heads-in-the-clouds, obsessed with their writing but they never clicked the way Ra-Ra and Zeke did. They’re both too selfish, maybe. Dizzee’s never had the patience to really get involved in all Zeke’s feelings, which seem to float close to the surface, ready to explode at any minute, hot and fast like a firework. Dizzee’s more a slow burn; he likes to marinate for awhile, collect his head alone. Ra’s the best listener Dizzee knows.

Ra-Ra and Boo-Boo are standing on the sidewalk outside the salon, talking intensely with serious faces. Ra-Ra catches sight of them and his eyes go huge in a way that tells Dizzee he’s in deep shit. Ra’s skinny like Diz, but he’s fast as hell and he’s on them in a second, crowding Dizzee up against the metal grate at the cashier’s place. “You’re not fucked up, are you?”

“What,” says Zeke at the same time Dizzee says, “no.”

“I’m serious,” says Ra. He’s right in Dizzee’s face. “Because they are going to kill you, like I-hope-you-have-a-will-ready kill you.”

“What the fuck,” says Zeke.

Dizzee shakes Ra-Ra off. “I’m fine.” Ra-Ra straightens his shirt, fixing the collar where it’s crumpled up on one side. His fingers feather against the bottom of Dizzee’s jaw gently.

His parents are arguing in the middle of the salon but when the bell chimes and they look him, they fall completely silent. A complicated emotion crosses his dad’s face and it’s only when Yolanda rushes him and throws her arms around his neck that he realizes it’s relief. “You are in so much shit,” says Yolanda into his ear, squeezing him tight.

His dad advances on him slowly enough that his mom says, “Winston,” with real warning in her voice. Dizzee flinches when he raises his hand, even though he’s ready for it, but instead of smacking him his dad just takes his chin in his hand and examines his face very closely. He turns Dizzee’s face left and right, like he’s searching for cracks in the workmanship. Dizzee doesn’t feel high anymore, but not totally sober either -- a low-grade buzzing under his skin, but he wonders what shows.

“Go change your clothes,” his dad says quietly. He’s not looking at Dizzee anymore, he’s looking out the salon window, where Diz’s siblings and Zeke are unconvincingly trying to pretend they’re not watching. “Come straight down and help your mother open up. If you even think about cutting out early today, I will give you the whipping of your life, you understand?”

“Yes, sir,” says Dizzee.

His dad nods once. “Go on.”

His mom squeezes his shoulder. “Sorry,” he says quietly and he is because his parents are almost his favorite people in the world. His dad used to be his best friend until last year, when suddenly things started to change between them and he still doesn’t really understand why.

When he gets upstairs, the apartment is calm and quiet in a way it never is, totally devoid of life. He stands in the hallway listening to the sounds between the sounds, the incremental tics of life underneath the general uproar and he has to bury his face in his hands because he feels warm all over and shaking and exhausted but also he can’t stop smiling, he doesn’t know how.

**

Punishment is lighter than expected: chores and house arrest, except on Sundays when they don’t want him underfoot, which means his mom intervened. His dad is a little far out sometimes, all about peace and togetherness, but cross him and he gets Old Testament vengeful. They all -- including Zeke -- have to sit through a dinner table lecture about trust, integrity, and strength in numbers. His parents don’t have a ton of experience punishing them because until Dizzee’s arrest, none of them had ever been troublemakers, although they’re going to need it for Boo-Boo, who’s gonna be a hellion, Diz can tell.

At first, it’s kind of nice. After he’s done at the salon, he reads in the peace and quiet of his empty bedroom, which is more like a closet-turned-study-turned-bedroom, while the boys are out. It’s freeing to sprawl across the whole bed with his legs up the wall, steal directly out of the fridge, and read Ra’s mint condition comics without one eye on the door. He rifles through Yolanda’s make-up -- he doesn’t really know how to use it and he can only imagine the storm of shit that would bring down on him if he did -- and finds a notebook with Shao’s name scrawled over and over in it. The dude is Kipling catnip for all of them except Ra.

He tells a version of the truth: he was writing, he got high, he lost track of time. Ra-Ra doesn’t look wholly convinced -- he’s the one who tracked down Daze and Crash in their beds at dawn when they realized Dizzee wasn’t home. “They said you haven’t been around as much,” says Ra-Ra, watching him closely.

Dizzee shrugs. “I’m around.”

Ra-Ra’s sigh is long and slow. “You should be careful alone,” is all he says and Dizzee’s stupid tongue almost betrays him to say _but I’m not alone anymore_.

He bides his time until Sunday, when they all get thrown out of the house for the day -- Dizzee has to be home by sundown. He’s starting to climb the walls a little, up at the crack of dawn then harassing Boo-Boo about finishing his damn waffles so Dizzee can hurry up and do the dishes.

“What’s the rush, Diz?” his dad asks, deceptively mild. “This is a day of rest. You got somewhere to be?”

“I’m losing my mind,” he says, looking down at his plate. “I’ve been in here for days.”

His mom takes pity on him and reassigns washing up to Boo-Boo, who’s been a little too free these days. The look Boo shoots him would turn a lesser -- or less desperate -- man to stone.

He’s out the door in record time, mostly because he doesn’t want to try to lose Ra, who’s like a dog with a bone once something’s got his attention. The early morning streets are mostly empty, shades still drawn and just a few early risers out on the street. For a few blocks, he’s the only one around. He turns his face up to the sun and closes his eyes. He loves the neighborhood but sometimes it feels like he takes longer to think than other people, like things move through his mind at a glacial pace and then burst; if he could just slow down and be alone for a few minutes, everything would be clear.

Sundays are the best days to work because people either sleep in or go to church, train service cuts by half, and all the cops kick their feet up for a few extra donuts. It’s almost holy, the ghostly quiet heading down into the station. Nearly everyone down here is sleeping.

He bypasses the writers’ bench and heads straight to the tunnel, imagining them all scrawled over with color like Willy Wonka’s boat ride. There’s a lamp setup about a hundred yards down, Thor sitting cross-legged in the middle of the tunnel like he’s meditating. The weird rush of cool relief that hits him is so strong he nearly stumbles catching his breath. “You’re here,” he says, even more tremulous when his voice echoes in the tunnel.

He burns hot all over when Thor looks at him, thinking of the breath against his mouth and Thor quietly saying, “oh god.” He pulls his hands into fists at his sides. Now is not the time. He has the pieces of himself divided neatly by the river and if it stays like that then what he’s up to feels less dangerous.

Thor opens mouth and closes it a few times like he’s mulling over what to say. “Everything okay?”

Dizzee settles down next to him so they’re both sitting basically in the dirt. Their knees touch, which Dizzee tries not to notice too much. “My place is like Rikers, but yeah. Out on good behavior.” Thor grins at that, it kind of emanates through his whole body.

There’s a look that goes on too long, until Dizzee asks what Thor’s working on, because art is always a safe topic for both of them. It turns out not a whole lot -- translating a dream about a door with a very bright light shining from beneath it. Thor’s into lighting, the way it plays off the colors and exaggeration of light in a piece. Goes with the god of thunder, maybe. He’s just staring at the tunnel, hoping it will take shape before his eyes. Dizzee’s intrigued -- he likes the idea of the wolf scratching at the door in sheep’s clothing. It bleeds through him, the same warm feeling in his belly when he walked into the tunnel and saw the phoenix piece sketched out: _every parcel of my being is in full bloom_ and knew it was meant for him, he was the we.

A maintenance corridor along one edge of the tunnel leads out and up -- one door is blown off its hinges. Dizzee crowds up against Thor and kisses him, in the dark with the train rattling past on the other side, wedging between Thor’s legs to touch his chest and neck, feeling the pulse spike under his mouth. It’s dumb and dangerous because the line runs all the way down and anyone could come to haul them off to jail or beat the shit out of them. Dizzee can barely hear anything over the rushing in his own ears and Thor panting against his mouth.

He goes to the library later and sprawls out on the couch, watching Boo try to teach Ra-Ra to dance for what must be the millionth time. Shao and Zeke are trying out some new tracks but thankfully the lyrics are still in their infancy because the only beat Diz can feel is the dumb steady beat of his own stupid heart.

**

A predictable rhythm begins at the library where Shao works obsessively all day, until the light filtering in through the windows begins to change and the air becomes heavy with expectation while he waits for Zeke to show. If it’s a good day, he’ll come still in his collared shirt, jacket slung over his shoulder. He hangs those away clothes carefully where they can’t be contaminated by pot and beer and music and they’ll try out new lyrics and Zeke will complain about his internship. On bad days, Zeke doesn’t show until late, sometimes after dinner, sometimes later and Shao grows sullen, prone to random verbal attacks. One day he’s on Ra-Ra about comics, the next he’s all over Dizzee's clothes.

“It throws us off,” says Shao, looking Dizzee up and down. It’s getting fully dark in the library.

“Shut the hell up,” says Boo-Boo. Sometimes it’s like everything is reversed: Boo-Boo watches out for him instead of the other way around.

“Why can’t you just dress normal instead of like--” Shao waves his hand in a way that seems to encompass everything Dizzee is. He shrugs. It’s easier with Shao to just let him burn himself out being pissed off, so then when Zeke shows up he wastes less time.

“He’s acting like this is a joke but it’s full-time shit,” says Shao, in the way he does when he’s getting riled up, one of his black hole moods where he sucks up all the energy in his orbit. “He needs to fucking choose.” Today Shao’s object of ire is Mylene but it could just as easily be Papa Fuerte or Koch or internships or school. Anything that divides Zeke’s attention away from the music -- and Shao -- is an enemy to be vanquished.

Shao gives his heart and soul to his passions; pursuing them with a single-minded intensity that runs so hot it’s hard to watch. He says he doesn’t understand love, but to Dizzee it seems like Shao only knows how to love: he’s never half way on anything. It used to be graffitti, now it’s DJing. It’s what makes him incredible, made Dizzee seek out his pieces all across the Bronx before he’d even met him. He could feel that love, like a live pulsating thing. It eats up everything in the room, bright enough to light them all, but there’s an edge of danger, like a star about to go supernova, consuming everything around it before it burns out into nothing.

Dizzee’s standing up when Zeke comes in, looking exhausted. If Dizzee’s two people at once, Zeke is three or four, each of them more haggard than the last. He looks mussed up, buzzing around the edges, the way he does when he sees Mylene first.

“Nice of you to make it,” says Shao. Zeke spreads his hands, looking caught, but unrepentant.

“Where the fuck you going, sneaking around like we don’t notice?” Shao asks him, not even close to finished ranting. “You gotta light up every train in New York?”

Dizzee looks at Ra-Ra, who shakes his head. “See you at home,” he says. Dizzee nods, even though by the time Ra’s home he’ll be halfway down Broadway.

It follows him, Shao’s ugly jealous voice echoing in his head, eating a black pit in his stomach. Always leaving, ducking out at the last minute. He doesn’t want choose. He’s not ready.

**

The hours between close and sundown are shorter than the rest of the day, which seems to drag out, Dizzee hiding behind a book while he makes change for customers, keeping his head down sweeping. “Penance,” says his dad, dry as a bone, when people from around the neighborhood ask what he’s doing in the shop instead of outside with his friends.

Dizzee’s wiping down the chairs in the shop, kneeling down to get every surface when he dad looms over him, blocking out the light. The perspective makes his face overly long and drawn out, like a wizened old man from a fable. He watches Diz like a circling hawk about to peck out his heart, the way he did the first few weeks after he picked Dizzee up from jail.

“No husband’s gonna show up here lookin’ to beat your ass, right Diz?” There’s a tone he takes now when he talks to Dizzee that didn’t used to be there, like he’s dealing with something unstable.

Dizzee laughs before he thinks to help it, face heating up. “No.”

His dad looks down at him for a long time, consideringly. “And you’re not getting in any trouble.”

Dizzee stares down at the linoleum. It’s covered in minuscule pieces of fine hair. “No,” he says softly. They’re not as careful as they could be: tunnels, rooftops, empty streets, because Dizzee sometimes feels like he’s possessed, some dumb, reckless animal takes over, wanting to hold and be held and feel someone’s heart beat against his. He thinks of Zeke telling Shao to kill him for the record and, yeah, it’s that exactly.

“Put those away when you’re done,” says his dad, toeing the edge of the broom with his foot. “Make sure you’re back by ten.” Dizzee breathes out slowly, nods.

Dizzee was a kid when his grandpa died and their family all piled into a bus to Niagara Falls for the funeral. The bus broke down in the middle of the highway, smoke and fire pouring out of the engine and everyone standing around with their battered suitcases on the side of the road. They had to wait hours for another bus to come pick them up, their mom sitting down under a shady tree while Boo-Boo cried in her lap, the rest of them growing increasingly whiny and hot until they all fell into fitful sleep right there in the grass a little ways off from the highway.

His dad woke him in the middle of the night and walked him into the trees, outside the where the bright lights lit up the highway, and pointed out the huge, sprawling spiral arms of the Milky Way stretching out overhead. He kept an arm around Dizzee’s shoulders, unveiling each new constellation as if by magic: Sagittarius, the Summer Triangle, the Dippers, and Mars, a tiny pink dot barely brighter than the stars. He thought his dad named the heavens. It was late summer, the air thick with the smell of trees and the surrounding woods dark but alive with uneasy sounds Dizzee can barely remember: the thick rustling of shuddering leaves, crickets and frogs and and the occasional bleat of an owl.

He was so tired the next day that he slept though the church service, face buried in his dad’s suit jacket. His mom was furious. Later, when he was designing Rumi, he wondered why him, if his dad knew even then that he’d look up at the sky and try to find a way out.

**

They book a party in the basement of an old elementary school through the magic of Shaolin Fantastic. When they started this thing with Shao, Dizzee just wanted to be part of something with them, wanted to soak up some of Shao’s aura, but now it’s growing beyond them.

Dizzee’s in charge of the flyer, so he and Thor design it together: dragons and spaceships and gods, stretched out against each other on Thor’s mattress. It’s raining outside, a relentless monotone drizzle that started before dawn and shows no signs of letting up.

“This is gonna be great,” says Thor. He looks wistful but he doesn’t push it, leans into Dizzee trailing his hand up Thor's thigh. It’s not that Thor would be out of place -- Shao’s warning voice telling them they don’t like outsiders when Dizzee’s been an outsider all his life, even now. But Dizzee feels like it’s him: he would give himself away. A minute tic in his face or a faint ember in his eyes, drawn to him like a lodestone. Being in love is consuming, the way it drapes itself around him.

He’s thought about making a tape, but even if he had the equipment, it’s kind of betrayal he doesn’t think Shao would get over, the samurai sword at his throat. It’s not the same though, he’s not selling it for cash; he wants to share something, a part of himself that he owns just as much as the rest of them. Dizzee tips his head against Thor’s shoulder and turns his face into his collar, tangling their legs together. Thor pulls his arm around him, hand spread wide between his shoulder blades, centering.

He calls home from a payphone with two of the fiberglass panels knocked out to say he’s coming home late. Thor’s face is tucked against his, listening. He can feel the heat from Thor’s fingers hooked into his belt loop, his thumb pressing against the point of Dizzee’s hipbone under his shirt.

“Where are you?” asks his dad in a clipped tone Dizzee can’t read.

He hesitates. “The city,” he says. “With a friend.” Thor’s breath is hot and damp on his cheek.

When he hangs up, he keeps one hand on the receiver for a moment, swallowing convulsively. Thor’s watching him uncertainly. The phonebooth isn’t quite big enough for both of them; Thor’s shoulders and back are rain-spattered, droplets clinging to his hair.“You don’t have to--” then he stops, biting the corner of his lip, because Dizzee’s already done what he didn’t have to do.

Dizzee shakes his head. “It’s worth it,” he says. “To be here.” Thor studies him very closely for a second, then leans in to kiss him, resting his hands gently against Dizzee’s hips in the middle of the street in the rain.

**

Dizzee’s lying on his back reading when Ra-Ra crawls up on the bed next to him, all sharp bony knees, elbows and shoulders until they’re side by side. Ra and Diz are both skinny like their dad; Boo-Boo’s still short but he’s already barrel chested like their mom’s brothers. Ra-Ra smells like sweat and the faint sour hint of booze from a party last night, which Dizzee couldn’t go to because he’s still on thin ice, not that that stopped him from sneaking out after his parents went to bed. The more he does it, the less he worries about getting caught. Or the more it seems like getting caught doesn’t matter. Like he’s getting punished for something as integral and vital as breathing. He can’t risk going too far, so he brought Thor to the library to show him the turntables and the books and press his mouth against Thor’s collarbone and the soft skin at inside of his knee, let Thor touch him until they were both shaking.

“You weren’t here when we got back,” says Ra suddenly, whispering. When Dizzee turns his head to look at him they’re almost nose to nose. “I checked.” Dizzee lets the silence stretch out until it feels like it crawls into his throat. “Boo and Zeke think you got a girl,” says Ra-Ra finally. “But you’d tell me, right?”

Dizzee nods slowly. Thor’s expression was hungry and jealous when he saw the temple, the cosy couches with cans and bottles and candy wrappers everywhere, evidence of their separate lives. Thor never talks about his family. “I’d tell you.” He looks back up at the ceiling, where a tiny fissure between the ceiling and the wall is beginning to grow, the building settling, growing into its surroundings. “I just need to get out sometimes. To breathe.”

“You can breathe in here, Diz.”

He closes his eyes when they get hot and begin to sting. Home used to be a refuge, where he felt like he could slip out of his human disguise. Now he feels like when he’s home he’s wearing a plastic version of himself, wrapped up in his chrysalis rotting, waiting until he cuts himself out.

Ra-Ra picks at one of the buttons sewn on Dizzee’s shirt where the thread has started to come loose. His nails make a gentle tap-tap-tap sound. “I feel like you’re all leaving me behind,” he says. “You and Zeke are off in space.”

“I’m right here,” says Dizzee, but he’s not really. He’s floating out somewhere beyond the reach of the sun, on the edge of a new solar system, straining to resolve the tiny specks before him into a new civilization. The sadness in his stomach is a collapsing star, swallowing up everything else with it before blowing out, propulsive.

**

The basement party is humid and airless and crowded, girls and boys dancing and singing and using up all the oxygen; Dizzee’s shirt is soaked almost before he gets to the stage, sweat running into his eyes. It’s loud, almost deafening, but Shao and Zeke look alive. They keep looking over at each other, grins lighting the other up, some kind of feedback loop that turns them up and up and up. Yolanda and the girls come; Regina’s already out in the crowd but Yolanda’s standing at the edge listening to Daze with a look on her face that says she’s not really hearing him.

They have new rhymes; Dizzee knows all the parts forward and reversed, from the top and bottom. They’re etched into his veins. Zeke sets the stage, then Diz, then Boo-Boo with his song and dance routine, then Ra -- shifting the pace -- and Zeke comes back to bookend the finale, a play in five acts. He practiced in the library with the boys and cross legged on the mattress in Soho, a hand hooked around his ankle.

He paces when he’s nervous now -- he never used to or maybe he had less to be nervous about. Cold sweat, sour, breaks out at his neck. There’s a build-up, a drumming, that precedes a performance, waiting until Shao’s spinning recedes into the background, opening up space for them. He’s never sought the spotlight -- he saves that for writing -- but he loves performing with them, being part of something living, not an instrument in an orchestra, but an arm or a leg. The way a foot knows without really knowing how to move in tandem with the rest. When he thinks about losing them, it’s like thinking about losing his limbs: even in the far recesses of his imagination, they’re still there, ghosts.

He feels barely ready before it’s over, like bracing himself for a wave only to have it break before it reaches him. When the crowd gets uproariously loud led by Zeke and Shao, Ra-Ra reels Dizzee in by his neck. “Amazing, right?” he asks, yelling, and Dizzee gets the feeling he’s really asking. He tips his head close to Dizzee’s, touching their sticky temples together.

“Amazing,” says Dizzee, feeling like an echo, a reflection of sound and space. Ra holds him for a second too long and he feels exposed, pinned, some new mutation under the microscope. Ra-Ra squeezes his the back of his neck before he releases him. You can survive without an arm or a leg.

Later in the dark, Thor asks him. “How’d it go?” He’s not sure if he hears or feels the words, Thor’s mouth near his ear. He hums against Thor’s skin and nods, letting himself be touched, Thor sliding his hands around the small of his back to trace an arc against his spine.

**

He’s sitting up on the roof of his building, legs dangling over the edge, watching Ra and Boo down in the street. He can’t hear them, but he can tell by the way Ra’s standing that Boo-Boo’s on his ass about something. They and Zeke are freshly shorn, lines crisp and even for the new school year. It rained in the morning and the late summer sky is all orange, red, and yellow, wisps of peachy-pink clouds like the whorls of a shell against the fading blue of the sky. He came up to draw or write, but he’s just been sitting, staring at nothing.

The fire escape rattles as someone climbs up and Dizzee turns to watch his dad pull himself up over the ledge. His knees crack audibly when he swings his legs over the side of the building to sit next to Dizzee. He doesn’t say anything for a while, just sits there, breathing. A crispness in the air signals cooler weather just around the corner.

Dizzee looks down at his hands, the last bits of paint flecked around his nails. “I think I’m gonna move out,” he says. “In the fall.” When he says it, he realizes it’s true. He’s thinking about it. He’s been thinking about it. He’s exhausted for all he’s been thinking about it.

There’s a long moment. Yolanda sticks her head out the window and yells to Ra and Boo to get their asses upstairs. “Where you thinking?” asks his dad finally. Dizzee takes the breath he didn’t realize he was missing.

Dizzee swallows down the sudden salty lump in his throat. “The city. Soho maybe.” He grinds his teeth against the tight pain in his jaw. You can write the sum of humanity on a record, fifty-nine ways to say hello, but good-bye is beyond transcription.

His dad rocks back and forth slowly, like he’s nodding with his whole body. “You’ll come for dinner on Sundays,” he says. He doesn’t phrase it like a question, but there’s the faintest hesitation in his voice that makes Dizzee realize he’s asking.

“Yeah,” he says.

“Can’t have you gone for too long. We’d fall apart without our soul.” His dad’s doing him the favor of not looking at him so Dizzee can pretend he’s not wiping his eyes with the heels of his hands and dragging them down his face. “You’ll be okay,” he says and Dizzee nods, heavy with it. His dad squeezes his shoulder, hand warm, each of his fingers leaving a mark like a five-pointed star. They sit out there a little longer, until his mom’s voice yelling their names begins to sound strident. His dad pauses to give him a hand over the ledge and he hesitates, thinking about staying out to avoid whatever the second part of this fallout is going to be, but in the end he goes in too, leaving the window open to the first stars winking into existence in the clear sky.

**Author's Note:**

> my deepest apologies to jaden smith. i’m hesitant to post this -- but whatever! a life lived in fear, right? as ever comments & thoughts are welcome. goldenfiligree @ tumblr if you wanna scream about my new children from the seventies that i’ve adopted. reblog fic [here](http://goldenfiligree.tumblr.com/post/151706872508).
> 
> This fic now has a [podfic](http://archiveofourown.org/works/13901709) available, which I think is super cool!


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